


Lose My Gravity

by Qpenguin98



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Driving, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, TAZ Amnesty, dubious coping mechanisms, i guess this is just my life now, loosely, writing aubrey fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 16:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15822786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: When Aubrey gets anxious, she drives. It’s easier to lose herself in the winding of the road and the hum of her bike against her thighs and the wind in her hair that she should definitely have covered with a helmet but only sometimes does than it is to focus on what it is that makes her feel antsy.





	Lose My Gravity

When Aubrey gets anxious, she drives. It’s easier to lose herself in the winding of the road and the hum of her bike against her thighs and the wind in her hair that she should definitely have covered with a helmet but only sometimes does than it is to focus on what it is that makes her feel antsy. She did it back home in Virginia too, grabbing her helmet to appease her parents and then clipping it to the side before riding too fast through the curvy roads of the forest near her house.

Woods are her favorite to drive through. The monotony of the trees and the road all blends into one big mass that she has to focus on to avoid hitting an animal or a stray person or anything in the road that shouldn’t be there. The heavy green surrounding everything is gentle on her eyes so she doesn’t have to strain to hard to keep her mind on the road.

The humming of her bike dulls out the uncomfortable buzzing in her chest or the disconnected feeling in her fingertips, overloading everything with a steady rumble that hikes up a notch when she speeds up or goes up a hill. She hates feeling anxious, feeling twitchy in her skin, like she can’t breathe right or focus on anything that’s happening around her. She’d like her body to figure itself out in that regard, but driving is a good alternative.

People love connecting the punk look to the bike, and yeah, she guesses she can be the punk biker gay stereotype, because she really is all of those things. But in reality she likes the motorcycle better than a regular car because it offers so much freedom. She can feel the wind hitting her face and can feel the tension under her legs and knows exactly what happens if she does something wrong and it’s exhilarating.

When she rescues Dr. Bonkers from the lab, dubious measures involved as well as a friend’s actual car for the real getaway, she invests in a sidecar so that he can join her. Everyone thinks it’s ridiculous, an oversized rabbit sitting in a motorcycle sidecar, he couldn’t possibly enjoy it. He does, in fact, enjoy it. Quite a bit.

She doesn’t always take him, still prefers to be as alone as she possibly can when her body gets coiled too tightly under her skin and inside of her bones.

When Aubrey’s house burns down and her mom dies, she wonders how none of the vehicles got caught up in the fire. She’s glad they didn’t. Her motorcycle and sidecar are perfectly intact, and at the soonest possible moment the next day, she loads up Dr. Bonkers and her meager bag that she had packed the night before and drives.

She doesn’t come back.

She’s glad she likes driving so much, because she does an absolute ridiculous amount of it. She drives across states and into big cities and places that can barely be called towns. She sleeps in hotels and motels and sometimes she doesn’t sleep at all, just continues driving through the night until she almost overcorrects a dangerous amount and checks herself in somewhere to sleep for a few hours.

Kepler, once she starts actually staying there, has a lot of empty roads with no people on them that get bumpy without warning or turn into gravel, but they’re relatively well kept. She hasn’t explored the forest roads too heavy yet, not familiar with the woods enough to feel comfortable there.

Aubrey gets anxious here too, that doesn’t change, but she’s not certain exactly how people at the Lodge would take her leaving every day, maybe a few times a day, to go drive the jitters out of herself. She’s not exactly sure how her anxiety works here, if she’s just more nervy or if she has actual things to worry about or if she’s so unused to staying in one place for more than two or three days at a time that her brain makes her want to move. Maybe it’s something else, or maybe it’s some trash feeling combo that she has to deal with.

Currently, she deals with her fuzzy feelings by locking herself in her borrowed room until they pass, practicing her magic, or talking with Dani. She only talks to Dani when she’s like this when it’s manageable enough that she doesn’t feel ready to explode at the smallest problem. Just when her chest feels the slightest bit choppy, or her fingertips go numb, or her body moves the slightest bit to the left of where it’s actually standing.

She hopes she doesn’t notice, but she knows she probably does.

One day, the jitters get so bad her hands are physically shaking, so she leaves Dr. Bonkers in Dani’s capable hands, ignoring the look on her face that screams worry, and goes helmetless to her bike.

She hasn’t explored the forest roads, but her anxiety feels like it’s at an all time high today and with how fucked her body feels she could use something to focus on.

The entrance to the Monongahela scenic drives is big and has the unmanned day pass center that she dutifully pays the fare for, Duck would be on her ass if she didn’t and she actually likes having the forest here, and then she drives on.

There’s a lot of trees here, a whole bunch of pines, some beech trees, some maples. Others that she can’t name but knows her dad taught her once. With how loud her bike is it’s doubtful she’ll see much wildlife, but she knows there’s a lot of deer here, a couple bears, loads of birds and squirrels. The road doesn’t wind too much, goes straight for a while then curves, then does the same over and over again.

The steady buzz under her legs grounds her a bit, but she knows if she takes her hands off the handles and stops for even a moment her head will go back to buzzing off into uncomfortable eternity.

Aubrey has exactly no sense of time right now. She could have been driving for ten minutes or three hours and she wouldn’t know until she looked at the time. She can’t feel her body right now, one with her bike, one with the road, one with the ground and the trees and all of the animals inside of them. Every inhale feels like the earth moving in her body, and every exhale is the same. Aubrey can’t really tell where she starts and stops, and that’s fine. This might be one of her worse anxiety attacks, but if she drives long enough it’ll go away. She’ll be fine.

It’s not long enough for her to be able to feel her body again when the jerk feeling starts. She’s jolted back into her body, still not feeling her extremities, and glances down at the dash.

The gas bar is dangerously low.

She curses audibly and tries her best to push it just a little bit further, just to the next rest stop, a place she can mark herself with, but it sputters out, jerking in her hold, and then it slows down and to a stop.

Aubrey sits there for a moment, feet pressed into the concrete to keep herself upright, and has a hard time understanding what exactly is happening to her. She’s lost, alone in woods she doesn’t know, with no gas and no viable way to get back.

There’s got to be a look out up ahead, the last one was a while ago, she thinks. She hops off and replaces her hands on the handle and begins pushing.

It takes what feels like forever to get to the next lookout, a scenic cliff face overlooking the river gorge. It’s all gravel and rock seats and a fence around the edge so no one slips off. She plops herself on one of those stone seats and just sits there for a while, trying to process where she is, what’s happening, and why her body feels like it’s going to vomit.

Stuck in the woods with no working bike. Right. Okay. The woods. The forest. Duck’s a forest ranger. He knows these woods.

Her phone blessedly has service here, and she wonders how when there’s no towers in sight. She doesn’t bother checking the time, just hits Duck’s name on her contacts. It rings, and rings, and rings, and rings, and just when she’s halfway given up on him answering the ringing stops and he picks up.

“Aubrey?”

It takes her a second to remember how to talk, and when she does she does her best to sound as cheerful as normal.

“Hey! Duck, I got a question. What do you do when someone runs out of gas on one of the scenic routes?”

“Uh, usually people call someone to bring them gas or pick them up, or we bring gas if it’s real desperate. Why?”

“Haha, well, you see, I may be out of gas. In your woods. Stuck at a scenic outlook. Alone.”

“Wh- how in the hell did you manage that? I thought you didn’t drive around the forest ‘cause you don’t know it.”

“Yeah well I’m here now so if I could possibly ask for a favor of you bringing me some gas, I would greatly appreciate it.”

She hears him sigh and loses a piece of herself with it. “Which outlook are you at?”

“Um,” she says, looking for a marker. “It’s a cliff, there’s a river underneath, buncha gravel, some trees.”

“Look for a little sign with a number. We keep them all numbered for stuff like this.”

She finally finds the smallest goddamn sign in the world tucked on the edge of the gravel. “I92,” she says dutifully.

Duck is quiet for a good few seconds and Aubrey starts to feel physically anxious all over again. “Aubrey, that’s like an hour and a half away. How long have you been driving?”

Her fingers go tingle numb and she barely holds the phone to her face. It felt like thirty minutes. She thought she’d been driving for a reasonable amount of time, not whole hour and a half away. She wonders if she’s in a different state. It wouldn’t be any more surprising than this.

“Aubrey?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers out honestly. “I… I thought it was less than that. I don’t… Duck I—”

She cuts herself off and doesn’t finish.

“Look,” Duck says, and she can hear him shifting. “How about I call someone from the closest station to go pick you up—”

“No!” she says, clutching at her phone. “No, no, no Duck don’t send a stranger up to come deal with me, I’ll pay for your gas, please don’t send someone I don’t know up. Please, please don’t, I can’t do that.”

“Christ,” he says quietly, harshly. “Alright. I’ll come get you. It’s gonna take a bit, okay? I’m not gonna be able to get up there any faster than an hour. It’ll probably be longer. Are you sure you’re okay to wait there?”

“Mhm,” she says. She pats around her vest pocket before finding what she wanted. “I’ve got headphones.”

“Alright,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“Uh huh,” she answers automatically, ignoring the spreading hole inside of her chest. Duck doesn’t need to hear about that. “I’m great.”

“Right,” he says, unbelieving. She hears the engine of his truck turn on and relaxes a bit. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you? Cause you’re up there alone in the woods and I know that’s not great for some people.”

“I’ll be fine,” even though she knows that every noise that makes it through her headphones will have her reeling into herself. “Don’t worry.”

“Too late for that,” he grumbles, not really meant to be heard. She hears it anyway, and another piece chips away. She feels empty and anxious all at the same time, and her hands start shaking again. “Alright. If you’re really okay I’ll let you go. Don’t kill your battery completely, I’ll probably call you when I’m getting close. Be safe, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, pulling her headphones out. “I’ll see you in a little bit, Duck.”

The phone clicks off and she holds it in her hands for moment, staring at the black piece of glass and plastic. Then she slips her headphones in and settles into her spot.

Aubrey can’t actually hear whatever music is playing, but sometimes little bits of the melody slip into her head. She rubs at the dirt with her boot, back and forth and back and forth again. The time moves slowly, she can feel it dripping by, dragging her down and down and down with it. Her bike sits propped up, tilted a bit to the side. She stares at it, stares as a bug lands, makes itself comfortable on the handle, and then flies off.

Her brain moves a million miles a minute, but the time could not go slower. It feels like an eternity, music playing that she can’t parse out, hands shaking in her lap from the nerves. She picks at the skin around her nails, anxious for something to do. There’s nothing for her to _do_ here.

When her phone buzzes in her pocket, she yanks out the headphones and hits answer incredibly fast.

“You there, Aubrey?”

“Uh huh, I’m here,” she says, rushed out. “You close?”

“Like five minutes out. Everything all good there?”

“I’m great, sitting in the sun, headphones in. It’s a spectacular day, Duck.”

“You might be a better liar than me, but that doesn’t make you any good,” he says, and she barks out a laugh, covering her mouth. He snickers over the phone.

“I’m just trying to make the best of it,” she says, trying to steady her hands so he doesn’t see when he finally arrives. It’s no use, they shake anyway.

“How heavy is your bike?”

“Not too heavy, she’s pretty light. I mean, hefty for sure, but light for a bike.”

“Good,” Duck says, and she can’t possibly imagine what he means. “Alright, I should be rolling around the corner her in just a second.”

She sees the front of his truck, dirt covered and relief filling, and she hangs up the phone. He rolls to a stop in front of her, shutting the truck off and hopping out.

“Alright,” he says, looking her up and down, checking for anything wrong. He frowns pretty early into that, and she pops her hands behind her back. “I got a proposition for you.”

“Shoot,” she says, shifting on her feet. Her arms feel like they’re sitting to her right, detached form her while the rest of her body moves just fine.

“How about we load your bike up in the back of my truck and drive back down together? I brought gas just in case, but I’m guessing you’re not to great to drive right now.”

“I can drive,” she snaps. “I’m fine to drive.”

“Humor me,” he says. “I’d feel better just cause I know the way back better than you do and I wanna make sure you get back okay.”

She stands there, hands shaking against her back, breathing choppy in her lungs. She knows he notices all of that, as unobservant as he likes to act. Her body fuzzes out and she forgets to answer, staring at him blank faced.

“Yeah,” he says, scrubbing at his face. “Yup, you’re not driving back by yourself.”

She nods, anxiety choking at her throat, and she goes to her bike, kicking up the kickstand and wheeling it to his truck. He pops the back and helps her heft it up, laying it gingerly on its side and closing the back again. She gets into his truck and buckles up jerkily, limbs fuzzing out. It rarely goes on this long, but she guesses today is just gonna be a bad day.

He’s driving suddenly, back on the road, turned around, and she jerks in her seat, looking for the rest stop.

“You alright?” He asks, now face to face. He can see her if she lies. Her tongue locks up and she nods. “Mhm, yup. You look real great.”

“Sorry,” she says automatically.

“You’re alright,” he says, not looking at her. “I mean, I know it is like an hour and a half of driving, but I’d rather know you’re actually alright than have someone else pick you up and then not hear from you until the next time I go up to the Lodge.”

“Sorry,” she says again, quieter this time.”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her for a second before sighing. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

“I drive when I get anxious,” she says, staring at her hands that won’t stop shaking, even though she talking and around someone. “It’s nice. But it wasn’t… I guess it didn’t do much today because I drove for an hour and a half and didn’t feel any better and then I sat there and now I feel worse.”

“You, uh, ever talk to anyone about it?” He sounds mildly uncomfortable, out of his element.

“You don’t have to listen to me talk about it if you don’t want,” she says instead of answering. “I know this isn’t really your thing.”

“I’m just not good at giving advice is all. I’ll listen, I’m just not the greatest for giving suggestions on what to do.”

“Okay,” she says, and then she stops talking.

The silence is stifling for a while, and then it gets more comfortable. The road curves, winding down the hillside. She breathes, low and deep, and feels her hands steady into her lap a bit.

“You should probably figure out something for it that doesn’t involve getting lost two hours away in the deep woods,” he says, holding the steering wheel loosely.

“Maybe,” she says. “It almost always worked before Kepler, though.”

“Maybe this is that time it doesn’t in the ‘almost’ there.”

She hums, and it gets quiet again. There’s music playing from the radio, crackly and tinny. Not much gets through on the radios here. Her lungs feel less like they’re trying to throw themselves out of her chest with every breath, so she thinks things are getting better.

Kepler comes into view eventually, and he turns slowly onto the main street, taking the easy way back to the Lodge. Aubrey can breathe steady now, body mostly back to where it should be. Duck keeps idle chatter going for the last leg of the ride, talking about this and that and the forest and their jobs.

When Amnesty Lodge comes up in front of her, he stops the truck but doesn’t make any more to get out.

“Listen,” he says, still holding the steering wheel. “I know I’m probably not the best person, hell, literally anyone your age would be better, but if you ever get stuck feeling like that and nothing’s helping, or you get stuck in the woods, or anywhere else kind of near Kepler, I’m here, y’know? I know we’re kinda coworkers and I’m more than a couple years older than you, but I’d consider us friends. I don’t like thinking about you getting stuck in the woods because your bike ran outta gas and you got too anxious. Just… I’m here. Even if there isn’t an emergency and you just wanna talk, I’m still here. Can’t promise any kind of advice or pushes forward, but I can listen.”

“Thanks Duck,” she says quietly, twiddling her thumbs together.

“Alright, lets get your bike out.”

They heft it back down, a little easier than getting it up, and she pops the stand out for a second.

“Can, uh,” she holds her arms out and he furrows his brows before recognition pops on his face.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah we can do that.”

Aubrey pulls him into a hug and he hugs her back, albeit a little awkwardly. Something tells her he’s really out of practice casually touching anyone in the same way she’s out of practice living in one spot. She’ll have to work on that.

“Thank you,” she says into his jacket. “A lot. And I’m sorry about making you go all the way out there. I’ll get you gas money.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “You don’t have to pay me back for helping you.”

“Are you sure? That’s a lot of driving and I know gas is expensive—”

“Really Aubrey. Don’t worry about it.” He pulls back and she lets go and he smiles at her. “Besides, it’s technically the state’s car so I’m not losing out on much.”

“Alright,” she says, still unsure. “Could I, uh, still get at least a little bit of that gas before you go?”

“Yeah, let’s load her up.”

They put the gas he’d brought for her into her bike, filling her up as much as they can. Aubrey wheels it back to the spot she parks it normally, setting it back next to the sidecar.

“Take care of yourself, alright?” Duck calls before getting back into his truck. “I don’t wanna have to make sure you’re okay like that again. I will, but I don’t want you getting stuck like that.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says cheerfully, and he waves her off.

“Eh, good enough. See you soon?”

“See you soon,” she confirms, and then he backs back down the driveway and out of the parking lot. He’s probably right, she should probably take care of that better, not get stuck in the mountains of woods that stretch on for miles and miles.

She double checks over her bike and resolves to make sure she has enough gas next time, head screwed on straight before she goes zooming through woods she doesn’t know. The Lodge is full of people and she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, but she’ll probably be able to slip upstairs unnoticed for the most part. She adjusts her vest and walks inside. Dani greets her, but everyone else is busy. She gives her a wave, shaking her head to taking back Dr. Bonkers. She’ll let him have fun for now.

She sinks into her bed, head heavy, and while she doesn’t sleep, she does rest. Her body feels drained, for all that she didn’t do today.

Tomorrow will be a better day, she tells herself. Today was a bad one, but tomorrow will be better.

She dozes off thinking about that.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is just what i do now! Write all the aubrey and duck interactions that i want, focusing on aubrey  
> guess im a full fledged amnesty writer? im working on some more stuff with my balance babes, do not worry.  
> It's a new semester and im so tired but i guess im just writing a bunch now  
> oh well


End file.
